


Trying to Catch the Devil's Herd

by inkheart9459



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AU-Bandit!Lena, Alternate Universe - Western, F/F, Implied abuse, Implied homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkheart9459/pseuds/inkheart9459
Summary: Lena became a bandit years ago with one mission in mind: make those that had wronged her and her dead lover pay for what they'd done. But maybe some of the things she thinks about the past aren't as true as they seemed and maybe some things from the past don't always stay there.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72
Collections: Supergirl Femslash Secret Santa 2019





	Trying to Catch the Devil's Herd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariel_Hedgehog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Hedgehog/gifts).



Lena kicked her stallion into action. He whinnied and obeyed, going straight into the gallop Lena had wanted from him. The train was coming, right on time, and it had documents and money from an old friend of hers that she intended to help herself to just as he had helped himself to…Lena swallowed, unable to remember the name of her lost love without losing composure, and now wasn’t the time for that. She’d been out riding in the west from far flung town to far flung town taking what she needed from men like the ones who had wronged her and her love all those years ago, but her real goal had yet to be achieved. She wouldn’t rest until every single man whose faces were burned upon her mind from that night were dead and buried, but not before they were desperate and destitute first.

There was the thunder of hooves behind her, her posse coming to her aid. They would keep the law off and steal anything else of use, but they knew to leave her to her own spoils. Anyone who took what was hers would be shot and left for the birds. She’d done it more than once. They knew she was serious.

Lena saw the moment the train realized they were coming for them. The plume of smoke got darker and more voluminous, but it was too late. They were pulling up alongside and one by one pulling themselves into the train cars, leaping from their horses in a practiced move. Lena located the bank car and grabbed onto it carefully. With a hop she was on the train, leaving her horse in the care of one of her men. He would round up their horses and take them back to their camp, obscuring where they were going along the way. There would be another group of horses waiting for them a few miles down the track waiting for them to hop on and ride back before the law ever had time to get off their asses and do something, just how Lena liked it.

When she had first started robbing bank cars like this, they had been laughably easy to break into, but the train companies had gotten smarter in the intervening time. Now they had thick, solid steel doors complete with a multitude of padlocks with a shackle thick as a man’s thumb. Normally, that would be enough to stop a good portion of bandits, unprepared as they usually were. Those that were prepared were smart, but change any one variable and they weren’t smart enough to think on their feet. But Lena was never unprepared and she had more than enough brain to take on anything some old man in a cushy office could think up.

She whipped out her tools and made short work of picking most of the locks, and smashing the rest at just the right angle that they popped open under her blow. Physics was a wonderful science. Good thing she had snuck into her brother’s lessons even after her parents had…very strongly suggested that she not do so again. Girls had no use for education. She had been born only to bring the family important business connections through her marriage and nothing more. She wondered how they were doing now that the family fortune had rode off into the sunset with her. The thought brought her a smile as she forced a lever into the steel door and pulled.

It groaned slowly open, letting out a burst of even hotter air. The bank cars might be lined with metal to withstand attack, but that meant they baked even more under the hot western sun. Lena had never minded as that oven feeling meant that she was one step closer to her goals, or at least a hell of a lot richer.

Lena froze as she heard a whimper coming from within the car. There were livestock slated to be on this train, but they would all be in livestock cars at the back, definitely not in the broiler of a bank car. Was an employee in the car and had heard them coming and was now cowering in fear? Good, she didn’t want anything to come between her and her money. Still, just in case it was a ruse, she drew her six-shooter and stepped inside.

The car was full of shadows after being in the bright sun. She stood for a moment to let her eyes adjust and then set to work. Steam engines weren’t quite as fast a horse galloping at full speed, but they never tired. She only had so long before it was time to throw her bags over the back of another horse and ride off again. She pulled her canvas rucksacks open and went straight for the box number she wanted. Inside would be about half a year’s worth of Daxam Incorporated’s profits, shipping from their California office to the main office in New York City. She was damn well going to be sure that none of them made it. She had run the numbers. It was possibly that the company could recover, but considering Michael wasn’t the bright candle, she very much doubted it.

Her hands grabbed money and bonds and an odd gold bar and shoved it into the bags. One box empty, two boxes, three, and on the fourth and final box there was nothing in it but a set of keys. Lena scowled at them, wondering just what they could be for, a safety deposit box, perhaps? It would take her a long while to figure out what bank they went to, if they were.

The whimper came from inside the car again, louder now that Lena was standing in it. It was easy enough to tell it was coming from the back corner furthest away from the door. Lena almost, almost turned back to what she was doing and ignoring the whimper, but she didn’t. If it was a worker going to try and stop her, he would have done it by now while her back was turned. He would’ve been in for a sore surprise too, but that was all moot now. Instead she’d get a chance to threaten whoever was in the car into keeping their silence. She didn’t need a high and mighty sheriff on her trail. She’d had a few now, and each time it had brought her nothing but grief and lost money.

She padded forward into the gloom. Lena saw nothing for a few long moments but then she could make out the soft white edge of a skirt. So not a railroad worker at all then, but what was a woman doing in here? It was far too hot to spend much longer than necessary inside. She kept advancing, making out more and more of the woman as she went. She was tall for a woman, but not overly so, and skinny enough to make Lena want to feed her up even though Lena hadn’t made even her own campfire dinner in many a year, she would make an exception here. The hair she saw was light, probably blonde, but not platinum.

The woman sat forward, and then Lena heard the clank of chains. Unable to help it, she was transported back to the day that she and Kara had been taken away. Indecency, they’d said. They would corrupt all women to their practices and soon society itself would collapse. Maxwell, Michael, and a handful of other men who had wanted to see the good name of Luthor drug through the dirt had been there to watch. The cuffs had been on Lena for days and days until her parents had finally bribed enough guards to pull her from prison to end the family shame, but it hadn’t been fast enough to prevent her from seeing the horrible things they had done to Kara. Always only Kara. She had been middle class at best and more realistically working class. They could safely get away with doing whatever they wanted with her in a way that they hadn’t been able to do to Lena. And when the chains had been taken off of Lena, as she was being lead out she had heard them say to string up ‘her pretty little friend until her feet stop a-movin’.’ Lena had broken then, and she really didn’t remember much of the next few weeks until her parents had tried to ship her off to parts unknown married to a man as reprehensible in reputation as he was in smell. It was then that she’d forged herself into the beginning of what she was now.

And the woman she was now was not going to let this girl sit in this bank car one second longer than she had to.

“Hi there, my name is Lena.”

The woman’s head jerked up to meet Lena’s eyes and Lena’s heart stopped. It couldn’t be. She was seeing a ghost after being thrown back into the past like that. She blinked. And then again, but the specter was still there.

“Kara?”

The woman nodded emphatically.

“But. But you’re supposed to be dead. They said…” she trailed off.

A muffled “Umph” came from Kara’s mouth and it was then that Lena realized she’d been gagged as well as cuffed.

Lena sprang into action, unlocking the cuffs and taking the gag off of Kara’s mouth as gently as possible. Kara took in a sharp breath and let it out, rubbing her wrists, but looking immediately more comfortable.

“They didn’t. They had other plans for me.” Kara swallowed visibly. “I wish they had.”

Red flashed before Lena’s eyes. Years. Years Kara had been alive and obviously held captive by them for having the audacity to love Lena. If she had wanted to burn them all to the ground before, they were getting hellfire and damnation now. She would make sure they would burn in hell with a bullet from her gun adorning them.

The train whistled blew at the start of the train. They were at the crossing for the main wagon trail through the area. They had another couple minutes before they were at their stop. They didn’t have time to go through everything that had happened between Lena being walked out of their hell of a prison cell and now. They would just have to talk later. And plan. Oh they would plan.

“Are your feet cuffed too?” Lena asked.

Kara shook her head and stood slowly and stiffly. “I’m sure we’re not just walking out of here, are we?” Her voice broke and rasped. Lena wondered when the last time they’d given her water was.

“No.” She smiled and tried to make it like the one Kara would remember, but she hadn’t been that naïve woman in so many years she wasn’t sure she pulled it off.

“Sounds like a better adventure than the one I’ve been on.” She extended her hand and Lena took it without hesitation. “A second with you on the run is worth more than a lifetime of whatever this was.”

Lena drew Kara close. Their time was waning, but this was the woman she loved, the woman she’d thought dead. She needed to make sure this was all real. Kara wrapped her arms around Lena tightly. Perhaps maybe she wasn’t the only one that need to know it was really happening.

She pulled back just enough to dart a look at Kara’s lips and Kara leaned in and kissed Lena hard and desperate. It wasn’t a kiss like the one that had torn them apart years ago after someone had seen them, soft and gentle and beautiful, but god almighty was it what she needed.

Another whistle. The train had spotted their horses. They had to go now.

“Come on, darling, we’ve got a horse to catch.” She pulled Kara with her carefully. Kara’s movements were still slow, but she moved with all the urgency of someone running. Lena couldn’t imagine how badly she wanted to be out of the stifling car and out of whatever stifling life she’d had before being forced on the train.

They reached the door just as the herd of horses drew even with their car. Lena spotted her second favorite mount and threw the sacks across its back. She turned and grabbed Kara around the waist.

“I take it this isn’t something you’ve done before?” Lena asked.

“Nope!”

“Trust me?”

Kara smiled like she always had, bright as the sun. “Always.”

Lena bent and then quickly shot up. “Jump,” she said at what she prayed was the right moment. Kara went soaring and Lena held her breath for the long second until Kara was on the horse and firmly seated after a wobble or two. She sighed and jumped herself. The horse was not going to thank her for the extra weight and force, but new horses were easy to come by and this one could spend the rest of his life in pasture if need be, she didn’t care. She reached around Kara and took the reigns and kicked her horse again pulling the reigns away from the train and up into the hills.

The topped the ridge quickly, though lagging behind the rest of her boys. That was fine, she knew how to handle herself and the approach back to camp. Instead she stopped her horse at the top and stared out at the retreating train.

“Lena?” Kara asked staring out at the black metal horse that had just been her prison.

“Yes, darling?”

“That money you stole from Daxam and Michael.”

“Yes, what about it?”

Kara turned around enough to meet Lena’s eyes out of the corner of her own. “I have a plan for it. I’ve had a very long time to think about it and I know just want I want to do.”

Lena scooped up the bags tied up in front of Kara and handed them to her. “Tell me what you want to do, and I’ll make sure it gets done.”

“I want him to suffer. I want him to burn. Them all to burn. But him.” Her face hardened. “Him last. I want him to know what’s coming for him and I want him not to be able to escape.”

Lena laughed humorlessly. “Oh, Kara, my love, I’m already ahead of you on that.” She laid a kiss on Kara’s neck. Kara flinched just a little, but Lena took no offense. They would have to take it slow and easy, but what was that in the face of having the love of her life in her arms riding double back towards the outlaw camp she’d help build with her own two hands. It could take an eternity and Lena wouldn’t care so long as she knew Kara was alive.

“Good.” Kara wrapped her hands around Lena’s on the reigns. “Good.”

Lena turned her horse towards the first pass they would need to make to obscure just where it was they were going. “Let’s go home.” She nudged her horse forward, letting him go at a fast walk towards home with the love of her life leaning back against her.


End file.
